Mac Users

[Chroma]

Just curious, Is there no hope for us Mac users? I stream every other console off my Mac but my 3DS I just cannot do. You can get image through one of the few existing apps like CuteCapture, but it doesn't do audio. Any small amount of existing devs have stopped developing years and years ago. Manual redirect of the audio to a Mac also doesn't seem possible, as Mac computers always have a single shared headphone/mic dynamic port, which always detects the 3DS AUX as headphones. I also tried buying a messy string of adapters and cables from Amazon to convert the headphone/mic port, and when that didn't work, I tried to convert one of the USB-C ports to do the same. The issue is that the audio that appears is screechy and just unusable. I spoke with the developer on the CuteCapture GitHub too, and they just can't do anything about it.

Is there any possible hope that we'll see a Mac version of the Windows software someday? Or should I just give up? Would be sad to let go of the capture board I bought since everything else about Windows just drives me mad and got me switched over to Mac. Even an OBS Studio plugin or the Windows app put into a Mac compatible container would work wonders, just hoping someone out there has the know-how. Would greatly appreciate it.

[Chroma]

I forgot to note, but if there's even an app or driver that could be installed into a WINE container/CrossOver to make it work with the existing software, I'm not sure if that's possible? I tried it in the past but realized that the capture board doesn't appear on Mac as a USB device because it has no drivers. I'm just sort of desperately trying to find any method that will work so I can use my capture card for streaming.

[Chroma]

I suppose it was a fruitless attempt. I was really hoping now that Apple switched to their own silicon for their computers and performance has increased substantially, the Mac development scene might capture a bit of attention again. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to shelf my poor capture card 3DS and just pray for something down the line.

[AngeloftheNight091]

Back in the day, I used to have VMWare and Windows 7 installed on my mac.
There is a capability of a pass through for usb devices. You might be able to try that.. or perhaps setup bootcamp if you have an older mac.

just my two cents.

[Chroma]

Back in the day, I used to have VMWare and Windows 7 installed on my mac.
There is a capability of a pass through for usb devices. You might be able to try that.. or perhaps setup bootcamp if you have an older mac.

just my two cents.

Heya, thanks for the input.

I have had experience attempting this through VM (VMWare, UTM, Parallels). The issue now is that with Apple's own silicon Macs, virtual machines for Windows have become very limited. You have to run Microsoft's gimped experimental builds of Windows 10 or 11 ARM, and I just cannot get the micro USB connection to appear in the app.

I've had the capture card for several years at this point and I'm kind of coming here directly after getting fed up with Windows and switching to Mac. This capture card is my absolute last thing that's attached to Windows with no good alternatives. I'm just kind of hoping that something can be considered, even if it's longer term.

[AngeloftheNight091]

Back in the day, I used to have VMWare and Windows 7 installed on my mac.
There is a capability of a pass through for usb devices. You might be able to try that.. or perhaps setup bootcamp if you have an older mac.

just my two cents.

Heya, thanks for the input.

I have had experience attempting this through VM (VMWare, UTM, Parallels). The issue now is that with Apple's own silicon Macs, virtual machines for Windows have become very limited. You have to run Microsoft's gimped experimental builds of Windows 10 or 11 ARM, and I just cannot get the micro USB connection to appear in the app.

I've had the capture card for several years at this point and I'm kind of coming here directly after getting fed up with Windows and switching to Mac. This capture card is my absolute last thing that's attached to Windows with no good alternatives. I'm just kind of hoping that something can be considered, even if it's longer term.

Did you try to go through the following links ? viewtopic.php?f=3&t=947 for DualCapture Beta 1 ?

[Chroma]

Back in the day, I used to have VMWare and Windows 7 installed on my mac.
There is a capability of a pass through for usb devices. You might be able to try that.. or perhaps setup bootcamp if you have an older mac.

just my two cents.

Heya, thanks for the input.

I have had experience attempting this through VM (VMWare, UTM, Parallels). The issue now is that with Apple's own silicon Macs, virtual machines for Windows have become very limited. You have to run Microsoft's gimped experimental builds of Windows 10 or 11 ARM, and I just cannot get the micro USB connection to appear in the app.

I've had the capture card for several years at this point and I'm kind of coming here directly after getting fed up with Windows and switching to Mac. This capture card is my absolute last thing that's attached to Windows with no good alternatives. I'm just kind of hoping that something can be considered, even if it's longer term.

Did you try to go through the following links ? viewtopic.php?f=3&t=947 for DualCapture Beta 1 ?

I did a while back, thanks. Same issue as using CuteCapture, it doesn't natively pull audio from the micro-USB port like it does on Windows, and plugging in any audio cable (tried different 2, 3 and 4 pole) on Macs doesn't work as they always have a dual-use single port for mic/audio out, and it always picks up as a mic while interrupting the audio output. I even did some troubleshooting on the CuteCapture GitHub page with the developer by trying a USB-C to audio/mic splitter, and even with the massive cable clutter, it still doesn't output sound.

I'm not sure what exactly the Windows app is doing, but you literally just plug in a micro-USB cable and it outputs the sound and video correctly. I'd really just like that for Mac. It's not feasible to ask Mac users to have a secondary computer or switch entirely to Windows just for this capture system. I hope it gets looked into somewhere down the line. Until then, no 3DS streaming for me.

[Chroma]

Doing my occasional revival of this thread to keep voicing a hope for a usable option for us Mac users.

Here's the current situation for Mac users:

• The primary suggested option, CuteCapture, has basically been dead for 3+ years. The developer has emphasized that they are no longer able to work on it, and nobody has forked it to make any meaningful updates since.

• CuteCapture in its current state, has many issues. At best, it will output the video through the cable. It cannot do audio through the same cable, and requires users to try using an AUX cable to siphon audio that way. However, basically every Mac out there only has a dual-use merged headphone/microphone port, and plugging in an AUX to the port and the 3DS headphone jack makes it appear as headphones only. It kills the Mac's audio output, and also outputs nothing itself to be captured. A splitter for the Mac's port was also suggested, but after trying 5 different brands of varying price and quality, this method also just does not work with CuteCapture.

• One alternative is to softmod the 3DS, and to try and use the wireless viewer mod NTRCapture. The idea of this software is, you run a server on your Mac, then through Wi-Fi connection, the 3DS sends its audio/video signal to the window to be captured there. However, the Wi-Fi limitations were never good on the 3DS (even later iterations), and even on my 1.5 Gbps fiber network (600 Mbps Download/600 Mbps Upload on Wi-Fi average), it can display at best at around 12-20 FPS. Any intensive game like Pokemon, and it dips well below 10FPS. It's not usable in any sensible situation.

• The only other alternative is to try and force the Mac to use Loopy's software through either a wrapper like Wine/Crossover, or to use a virtual machine like Parallels or UTM to emulate Windows. Wine/Crossover absolutely has no chance in its current state, because it cannot detect the 3DS being plugged in. Parallels or UTM has a chance to work, but is not feasible either. On Apple Silicon Macs (which is all Apple sells now), you cannot run X64 or X86 Windows, and are forced to run Windows 10 or 11 ARM. I'm unsure if it's due to it going through an extra emulation layer or something else, but even after installing Loopy's software and the audio drivers, something or other will not work properly with the software. Sometimes when I boot up the VM, it just refuses to acknowledge the 3DS is even plugged in, despite it being detected in Parallels. Other times, you might get lucky and the video pop up, but the audio drivers just never detect. Even if all of this worked, it does not run at a solid performance. Again, I'm unsure if that's because of the extra emulation layer messing with things.


All of this is to say that as a Mac user, I've explored every option out there for years. I've owned the capture card for the original 3DS, and now I own the card for the N3DSXL. I've communicated with CuteCapture, Crossover, Wine, and gbatemp communities to try and figure out some way to make it click on the Mac, and I've come up empty. There just is no way for Mac users to reliably use the capture card at the moment.

I'm tossing my note here again in hopes that potential talks about adding Mac support to the main capture software could be considered. An alternative would be if the capture card itself to be updated to be detected as a device on OBS Studio, which is available on Windows, Mac and Linux. As a similar example, using capture cards like Elgato was initially difficult on Mac, but an updated model was given detection support in OBS, and now allows HDMI devices to be captured straight up. Same with the iPhone/iPad. You just plug them in, and they appear in the dropdown as Video Capture Devices, and from there, OBS can either directly stream this to sites like YouTube/Twitch, or record as MP4/MKV to your computer.

To be realistic, is this just a permanently dead and unrealistic thing, or is there any hopes for us Mac users? Thanks for any considerations on this.

[sportzfrk]

https://github.com/ChrisMalnick/xx3dsfml

This is in more active development, has audio (although not perfect audio, it’s still good) and should work for Mac using homebrew to install the SFML library.

It only works with Loopy’s New Nintendo 3DSXL boards, but those are what are being produced now.

[Chroma]

https://github.com/ChrisMalnick/xx3dsfml

This is in more active development, has audio (although not perfect audio, it’s still good) and should work for Mac using homebrew to install the SFML library.

It only works with Loopy’s New Nintendo 3DSXL boards, but those are what are being produced now.

I just saw the thread for this and left a reply, thanks for sharing!

I bought a local n3DSXL and had Loopy's new card installed. It's been mighty delightful with the USB-C port taking care of audio/video AND charging at the same time (the charging alone is a massive win). However, I recently finally got to ditch Windows by selling off my old annoying mini-PC that wasn't even able to stream consistently well and getting a Steam Deck. It just kinda left me unable to use any capture. I really look forward to seeing this come to fruition!